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May 05, 2025 Web Exclusive By Caleb Campbell

Self-destruction is part of the creative DNA of Toronto punk band PUP. Every record since their self-titled debut has acknowledged it—The Dream is Over, Morbid Stuff, This Place Sucks Ass, and most recently, THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND. Blistering riffs, viscerally catchy shout-along choruses, and self-deprecating lyrics are just part of the formula that made PUP so continually enduring and exciting over the years, all while their lyrics screamed that they were mere inches from a breakdown. What happens after the breakdown finally hits, though?

Much of PUP’s latest album, Who Will Look After the Dogs?, takes place in that aftermath. Soon after the release of their last album, frontman Stefan Babcock ended a decade-long relationship. While the rest of the band members were entering new life phases, he was left isolated, feverishly writing new music. The resulting record is the band’s most reflective and inward-looking, leaving the listener to sit back as Babcock cracks himself open and howls his way through a series of excoriating and acutely bitter punk tunes.

Like all of PUP’s albums, on paper it sounds like a real downer. However, fans know that the band’s greatest talent has always lain in making feeling bad sound so good. “No Hope” opens the record in classically downcast fashion (“I don’t need hope / It’s killing me / It’s burned a hole / It’s torn right through / My whole body”), but it also captures the band’s no-frills pop punk attack at its best. Many of PUP’s best songs thrive in this mode, when the band lets that unbridled punk side come to the fore. They can sound like a band in overdrive, as if they’re pushing themselves to the limit and could explode outwards at any moment, yet they always manage to find a solid hook or enticing groove amid the anarchy.

The band bring some of that cracked intensity back on their latest record, albeit with much better musicianship than their basement punk days, letting tracks flame out in blazes of shambolic guitar soloing on “Cruel” and “Hunger for Death.” Similarly, “Get Dumber”—which features Jeff Rosenstock on backing vocals—and the lead single, “Paranoid,” both pile on the ripping energy, leaning hard on Babcock’s frenetic vocal delivery. These energizing high points offer all of the wild punk abandon that fans have come to expect from a PUP album as the band is let loose to wreak havoc with massive riffs and a storming rhythm section.

As the band tells it, their studio time has similarly been chaotic in the past, colored by their shared perfectionist tendencies. Who Will Look After the Dogs? supposedly came together much easier, in no small part thanks to producer John Congleton. He encouraged the band to follow their instincts and avoid laboring over every take. Fittingly, the album has a much looser and organic feel than the sleek and meticulous arrangements on the band’s last record. However, this less labored approach leaves a few moments in the tracklist feeling underwritten, as with “Olive Garden” and its jarring sing-song melody.

Amidst the spikes in energy peppered throughout the record, the album equally finds PUP adopting a lighter touch, more in line with their indie rock influences like The Weakerthans. The band have always had an ear for sharp melodies, but songs like “Best Revenge” or “Shut Up” immediately rank among their most accessible and melodic. With the latter track, the band go all in on big pop punk gang choruses, tailor-made for their raucous live shows. Within a few months, hundreds of fans are going to be screaming out “The best revenge is living well / I’ve been living like shit, it’s been fucking up my sleep,” one of the band’s most quotable and infectious choruses. In contrast, “Shut Up” strips back much of the distortion and noise, leaving the first half of the track colored by a solitary guitar track and Babcock’s vocals. Babcock tours through a bittersweet vignette, breaking his usual sardonic facade for a portrait of genuinely warm and heartfelt sentiment—“You’re working through the evenings / I’m working through the fog / You’ve got your master’s thesis / I’ve got my stupid little songs.”

However, even when PUP lightens the tone and texture behind their songwriting, they remain the perpetual pessimists. You’ll never mistake a PUP song for any other band. Nobody else in their scene is quite as unflinchingly self-critical, or quite as catchy, and no other band balances the two the way that PUP do. “Hunger for Death” turns Babcock’s nihilism into a full-on loping sing-along moment as he confesses, “I don’t wanna argue / The problem is you, the problem is me / And we’re at the crest / Of the shit wave, baby.” Similarly, “Falling Outta Love” and “Cruel” dip into power pop, with the former track finding Babcock flanked by bright harmonies as he once again tries to sift through a failed relationship: “Don’t know if I can face it all / Don’t know how the hell / I was supposed to stand you when / I couldn’t even stand myself.”

For four full-length albums, PUP have been peeling back their collective neuroses, writing great songs largely from the frame of how nerve-frying, exhausting, and infuriating it is being a touring band. Somehow, Who Will Look After the Dogs? is even more fatalistic. Even a hooky upbeat dose of indie rock like “Hallways” comes laced with an anxious refrain: “When one door closes, it might never open / There might be no other doors.” The band’s greatest trick is making the results feel cathartic rather than dour. For all of their songs about how they’re all aimless screw-ups, PUP have proved themselves as one of their era’s most talented and consistent punk acts. If they can wrestle through the self-doubt and stinging fury and come out the other side, maybe things aren’t quite as hopeless as they may seem. Breakdowns will come for all of us. We can only hope to recover as gracefully as PUP. (www.puptheband.com)

Author rating: 7.5/10